In an abstract sense, we know what roles financial institutions fulfil. In particular, (i) financial institutions avoid duplication both when monitoring loans and collecting information, (ii) they help to smooth consumption, and (iii) they provide liquidity.6 There are many enjoyable descriptions of some activities enacted in the financial sector that seem hard to reconcile with the laudable tasks thought of by economists. Moreover, knowing what the tasks of the financial sector are in theory does not tell us whether those tasks are fulfilled efficiently and at the right price. Nor does it tell us why the income earned by the financial sector has increased so much. As pointed out by Philippon (2008), in the 1960s outstanding economic growth was achieved with a small financial sector. Has it become more difficult to obtain information so that we now need to allocate more resources to the financial sector?

final paragraph does not go far enough, but it is still remarkable to see it published from this corner

Kevin Phillips, author of Nixon's Southern Strategy and hence of much of what ails the U.S., has in the past decade brought much attention to the "financialisation" of the U.S. economy and its parallels with the late stage of other global empires like Spain and Britain. It's worth searching for his shorter essays on the topic (search "Kevin Phillips financialisation") even if you aren't inclined to read his mea culpa trilogy about the colusion of financialization, resource scarcity, and the Americal Christian fundamentalist movement in bringing about the end of our era's empire.

I'd link them here, but this hotel's painfully slow wi-fi + the hassle of bbcode on an ipad are conspiring to make my posting a painful exercise.

I commended Satyajit Das 1997 Traders, Guns and Money in the undersubscribed book of the aughts poll as my favorite non-fiction book. He has a new one out entitled Extreme Money, also funny, bitter, and dense with references (he's the Dennis Miller of derivatives/finance writers) that is a nice complement to the Bookstaber above.

I see UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli studied the same subject at the same university as my least favourite ex, probably the year below him. I don't know whether to wonder if they met or just observe that they are clearly all terrible people

meanwhile the current bf used to work as a software engineer for some stock exchange trading software/network company and it was the worst place he's ever worked for the sheer amount of bullying to work twice your contracted hours for no extra pay, meet unreasonable deadlines, get sent away on business at the weekend (again, for no extra pay and with no expenses paid). and it wasn't any better paid than any other IT job

(in case anyone wondered how he came to have this job, the software team had previously been a little independent not-specifically-financial software company who got bought out by a finance team, and he got out as soon as he could after seeing what the new regime was like)

this one sticks out: “We used to rely on the public making dumb investing decisions,” one well-known Manhattan hedge-fund manager told me. “but with the advent of the public leaving the market, it’s just hedge funds trading against hedge funds. At the end of the day, it’s a zero-sum game.” Based on these numbers—too many funds with fewer dollars chasing too few trades—many have predicted a hedge-fund shakeout, and it seems to have started. Over 1,000 funds have closed in the past year and a half.

That article is cute, but basically just a vehicle for bank PR. Bove is seriously a joke at this point. Attributing the economic pain that banks are feeling at the moment to Dodd-Frank is beyond silly. More prop positions in the last year would probably have just meant more losses. Either they're just really selectively quoting Dimon, or somebody convinced him that he shouldn't necessarily insult everyone all the time (cf. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/09/12/jamie-dimon-declares-basel-bank-capital-rules-anti-american/)

well i think there's a middle ground between 'dodd-frank changed everything, the glory days are over' and 'dodd-frank will change nothing, wallstreet is exactly the same'. 'don't like your bonus? quit' is a genuine change of tone, even if it's on some level a pr stunt, at the very least it's the *right* pr stunt. the industry is going to employ fewer people and increased regulations can't have *no* effect. and I think the american public, esp the younger generation, has soured on finance to an extent that might itself affect things. this is gonna continue, esp if romney gets the nomination. that said, I don't like the 'well, that's the end of that story' tone of the article.

So in return for hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds used to keep the financial system from going under, the banks will emerge from this crisis largely unscathed. One reason for this is Wall Street’s skill at lobbying, and its ability to spread huge amounts of cash around Washington. As Public Citizen documented, between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street spent $5 billion in campaign contributions and deployed 3,000 lobbyists across Capitol Hill to get its way. While $5 billion sounds like a lot, it was less than a third of the Goldman Sachs bonus pool for 2009, and spread out over a decade. Wall Street has a lot of money, and Congress can be bought on the cheap.

But, as I argued earlier, Wall Street also represents the commanding heights of the economy, the central mechanism by which ruling class economic power is formed and exercised. It’s only surprising to people who don’t understand this that Washington dances so faithfully to the bankers’ tunes.

...Thanks to a small band of people who moved into a private park near Wall Street last September 17, political discourse and activism have taken the most hopeful turn that I can remember. I have my reservations about the ideological orientation of a lot of the Occupiers. And it’s hard to know whether this spirit will survive the winter—or the banalizing tendencies of presidential election campaigns. But I’m going to bracket that for now and admit to more than a shred of hope that things are turning in a seriously better direction. Finally.

“Newspapers -- I went and got this one day just for fun -- 42 percent payout ratio, which I just think is just damned outrageous.”

“Worse than that, you don’t even make any money!” Dimon said, directing his comments to those in the media covering the company’s investor day and drawing laughter from his audience. “We pay 35 percent. We make a lot of money.” JPMorgan posted $19 billion in profit last year.

Despite the difficult environment, New York firms paid roughly $20 billion in year-end cash compensation to their employees. The average bonus was $121,150, down just 13 percent from the year before as the head count shrank. In 2006, the year before the financial crisis, the average investment bank employee took home a bonus of $191,360.